Living Locally
Turning food waste to fuel at Hotel Blackfoot
April 25, 2018
Hotel Blackfoot is saving costs while saving the environment, thanks to technology from Eco-Growth.
When the City of Calgary mandated all businesses to offset their organic waste in November of last year, Hotel Blackfoot general manager Scott Warner says the team wanted to find a better solution than just hauling away the hotel’s organic waste.
Enter Eco-Growth, a team of innovators that are creating new ways to define being green. One such invention, dubbed EGOR (Eco-Growth Organic Reactor), is a mass dehydration system that reduces all organic waste – food, napkins, and yard waste -- into completely dry, pathogen-free biomass. Eco-Growth picks up the biomass and returns it to its parent company in Northeast Calgary, industrial laundry service Executive Mat, where they wash 45 tonnes of mats a day. The biomass is used to generate heat for this process.
In the first month that Hotel Blackfoot had EGOR onsite, it offset 5.4 tonnes of waste. The hotel continues to offset an average of 180 kg per day.
Glen Smith is the VP of Business Development at Eco-Growth. “For the past seven years, we’ve been responsible for taking waste from our clients at no charge, and converting it from landfill waste to energy,” he says.
“We don’t use any natural gas in any of our laundry service.”
Scott says the hotel is working on bringing in a boiler system from Eco-Growth, so that they may use their own biomass to heat water in the kitchen, further reducing Hotel Blackfoot’s carbon footprint and creating a closed loop cycle within its own walls.
“It’s good to be nice to the planet you’re supposed to be living on for the next 50 to 1,000 years,” Scott says. “And it makes economic sense to us as well, providing a tangible monetary return.”
TAKE ACTION:
Click here to book a room at Hotel Blackfoot.
Hotel Blackfoot's dining options are available to the public and guests alike. Click here to check it out and contribute to their offset!
Learn more about Eco-Growth here.
Connect with Hotel Blackfoot on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Visit Hotel Blackfoot’s Sustainability Profile.
Read More
When the City of Calgary mandated all businesses to offset their organic waste in November of last year, Hotel Blackfoot general manager Scott Warner says the team wanted to find a better solution than just hauling away the hotel’s organic waste.
Enter Eco-Growth, a team of innovators that are creating new ways to define being green. One such invention, dubbed EGOR (Eco-Growth Organic Reactor), is a mass dehydration system that reduces all organic waste – food, napkins, and yard waste -- into completely dry, pathogen-free biomass. Eco-Growth picks up the biomass and returns it to its parent company in Northeast Calgary, industrial laundry service Executive Mat, where they wash 45 tonnes of mats a day. The biomass is used to generate heat for this process.
In the first month that Hotel Blackfoot had EGOR onsite, it offset 5.4 tonnes of waste. The hotel continues to offset an average of 180 kg per day.
Glen Smith is the VP of Business Development at Eco-Growth. “For the past seven years, we’ve been responsible for taking waste from our clients at no charge, and converting it from landfill waste to energy,” he says.
“We don’t use any natural gas in any of our laundry service.”
Scott says the hotel is working on bringing in a boiler system from Eco-Growth, so that they may use their own biomass to heat water in the kitchen, further reducing Hotel Blackfoot’s carbon footprint and creating a closed loop cycle within its own walls.
“It’s good to be nice to the planet you’re supposed to be living on for the next 50 to 1,000 years,” Scott says. “And it makes economic sense to us as well, providing a tangible monetary return.”
TAKE ACTION:
Click here to book a room at Hotel Blackfoot.
Hotel Blackfoot's dining options are available to the public and guests alike. Click here to check it out and contribute to their offset!
Learn more about Eco-Growth here.
Connect with Hotel Blackfoot on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Visit Hotel Blackfoot’s Sustainability Profile.
